While Flipkart has been dealing with major senior level exits since the beginning of this year, it is Snapdeal this time, wherein Chief Product Office Anand Chandrasekaran has quit the company. The announcement came via a tweet from co-founder Rohit Bansal, just minutes ago.
@anandc proud of the super work by you and the product team. Hard to believe that this was just 1 yr. Farewell, keep rocking!
— Rohit Bansal (@rohitkbansal) May 24, 2016
To this, Anand responded,
@rohitkbansal thanks for the support. We did in 1 what would take 3 years anywhere. Incredible passion @snapdeal. Best still to come!
— Anand Chandrasekaran (@anandc) May 24, 2016
Chandrasekaran joined Snapdeal in June 2015, while he was the Chief Product Officer at Airtel. Prior to that, Anand was with Yahoo, where he held roles of Sr. Director for Mobile. Prior to Yahoo, Anand was Director of Product at Openwave.
An entrepreneur himself, he co-founded Aeroprise Inc. Under Anand’s leadership, Aeroprise became the most-deployed solution worldwide for mobile service management, raised $7M in funding and was acquired by BMC Software.
Anand carried forward his entrepreneurial acumen further ahead, albeit in the form of an angel investor. He has made personal investment in numerous Indian startups, including the likes of Pluss, Innerchef among others.
A stanford alumni, Anand holds a M.S. in Electrical Engg. from Stanford University, and a B.S. in Communications Engg. from PSG College of Technology (India). In 2010, he was named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
It has been a year of exits — at senior level to make it worrisome — for India’s homegrown ecommerce poster boys. While Flipkart leads those exits, this is the first major one coming from Snadpeal. For Flipkart, the two most headline grabbing of them all, were exits of Punit Soni and Mukesh Bansal. Punit Soni had a rather celebrated entry into the company with media headlines going to the extent of saying “India poaches Silicon Valley talent etc…”. The exit, was equally obscured, with company citing no official reason for his exit.
With Chandrasekaran’s exit, both of India’s top two ecommerce giants have lost their biggest hires and that too from perhaps the single most quintessential position — Chief Product Officer. There has been no announcement from Snapdeal on this exit or on a new appointee.
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